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I forwarded the link to my experimental colleagues and here is the comment from Sergei (the master himself:) "this is what Igor has been doing - an array of plasmonic nanocables. This basically works as a wire-medium slab. All their epsilon and mu are rubbish." * If Sergei is as strict as in this comment, then it IS rubbish. He's not one of the notorious complainer (as e.g. myself.) * Please DO NOT FORWARD this to anybody else, Sergei's comment is NOT FOR PUBLIC USE!

UPDATE: I had a short chat with Sergei and Pekka, Sergei noticed that there is an increasing number of papers on metamaterials, especially in Nature and Science, which are simply wrong, this one being an example. * The idea is based on a very well known effect of wired media. What appears to be interesting about this paper is that they manage to make an optical analogue with aparently low losses. This could be interesting. * The whole interpretation as NIM, "wrong" refraction etc. is total nonsense.

wow, good to know ! But for the privacy you should be aware that this is a public group, so anyone has access to our comments i think !

All the satellite-related systems (except for the rocket to launch it) are DIY programs -- designed so that regular people may also have the chance of developing and eventually launching their own.

I was saying that mainly because of some flaws - the piggy-pack installation, no dedicated stage, the limited control, ... It is so far very funny, but once he can fill all the gaps, it should be an excellent initiative - although careful about the debris if anyone has its own ;p

his quote: "when art becomes practical, we call it technology; when technology becomes useless, we call it art" ... this is probably the later one ....

Nice initiative, isn't it?

some citizen science added to this would make it even better ... as it is it's rather, boh ...

Well, true - making data public is one thing, and making others to work through them for you is another... I love the new term "citizen science" though (and an explanation on the Wikipedia page why they had to invent a new one because "crowdsourcing" is soooooo - politically - wrong).

Google Books measurements of word frequencies on 15 million books (12% of all the books ever published). More about it in:  - Google Opens Books to New Cultural Studies - John Bohannon, Science 2010-12-17 - Slashdot: Google Books Makes a Word Cloud of Human History - http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/info

here we go again...

slashdot: "Russian computer scientist Vladimir Romanov has conceded that his previously published solution to the '3 SAT' problem of boolean algebra does not work."

"collective wisdom" to define what a "galaxy" is. Is it really a good approach ? It does not seem any sociologist is involved in the process. http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1101/1101.3309v1.pdf

How about "collective wisdom" on what "stupid research" is?

includes some discussion on the aftermath of NASA's arsenic paper

who is interested in following this a bit closer?

they used names of scientists and research centres without these actually knowing about their involvement it seems.... I am wondering what they actually reported back in terms of results? randomly generated papers? Christos?

Hopefully I'm wrong, but I'm very pessimistic. I guess they will impose even more control, ask for even more detailed description of the results that will be delivered and concentrate even more on project funding instead of funding open research.

maybe this is what happen when there is so much paper involved... a simple phone call to one of the research scientist and the fraud is unveiled :) or maybe the "bored project officer" has a brand new mercedes...

Who are the most ruthless capitalists in the western world? Whose monopolistic practices make Walmart look like a corner shop and Rupert Murdoch a socialist? You won't guess the answer in a month of Sundays. While there are plenty of candidates, my vote goes not to the banks, the oil companies or the health insurers, but - wait for it - to academic publishers.

fully agree ... "But an analysis by Deutsche Bank reaches different conclusions. "We believe the publisher adds relatively little value to the publishing process … if the process really were as complex, costly and value-added as the publishers protest that it is, 40% margins wouldn't be available." Far from assisting the dissemination of research, the big publishers impede it, as their long turnaround times can delay the release of findings by a year or more." very nice also: "Government bodies, with a few exceptions, have failed to confront them. The National Institutes of Health in the US oblige anyone taking their grants to put their papers in an open-access archive. But Research Councils UK, whose statement on public access is a masterpiece of meaningless waffle, relies on "the assumption that publishers will maintain the spirit of their current policies". You bet they will. In the short term, governments should refer the academic publishers to their competition watchdogs, and insist that all papers arising from publicly funded research are placed in a free public database. In the longer term, they should work with researchers to cut out the middleman altogether, creating - along the lines proposed by Björn Brembs of Berlin's Freie Universität - a single global archive of academic literature and data. Peer-review would be overseen by an independent body. It could be funded by the library budgets which are currently being diverted into the hands of privateers. The knowledge monopoly is as unwarranted and anachronistic as the corn laws. Let's throw off these parasitic overlords and liberate the research that belongs to us."

It is a really great article and the first time I read something in this direction. FULLY AGREE as well. Problem is I have not much encouraging to report from the Brussels region...

I especially like " The program will also create a "developer's kit" of open hardware and software specifications to make it easier for new components to integrate into such fractionated systems." Joris: wanna take the lead on having a closer look on this, I definitely would like to be part of it and happy to contribute, possibly also Juxi? - first assessment by Christmas realistic?

I think it a very interesting approach. If you google "darpa F6", you should see that a lot seems to be on-going. So, should we do something about it before having the conclusions of the Darpa study ?

wait and see is never a good approach in these cases .... first step has to be anyway to understand what they are up to and then to think about our own ideas on it, own approaches, alternatives and then to see what we can do specifically in the team on it.

Excellent comments from the Apollo original source code:)

this might come very handy in case we explore further the idea of a virtual ACT - one of the key points: you still have to meet from time to time physically ...

look at these bugs .... can't we do something with them? they look nice for sure ....